The Lich Without a Soul Vessel

They ate quickly and rode hard. Evan wanted to reach Kansas City within two days, and the pace reflected it — nothing like the unhurried travel of the past weeks.

Kansas City was the largest settlement in the surrounding region, governed by a magistrate named Thompson with a standing garrison of a thousand men. Evan wasn't there for Thompson.

He was there for the Silver Hand.

In a city this size, an organization like the Silver Hand would have a presence. They wouldn't advertise it. He didn't know their location, and he didn't need to — he had a different door to knock on first.

He found Fruit-dew Street and the number 203 without difficulty. A tavern, as Windsor had said. He and Tina left their horses with a stable boy and went to the bar. Evan set the pendant Sophia had given him on the counter without ordering anything.

The bartender — heavy-set, apparently idle — picked it up with the motion of someone doing nothing in particular. He glanced at it, glanced at the two of them, and set it down again. Evan caught the flash of something behind his eyes and the faintest pulse of magical energy in his hands, gone almost before it registered.

"Good day. If you'll follow me."

They went upstairs and down a left-hand corridor to an office. The bartender knocked: three long, two short, three times. A voice from inside said to come in.

The room was arranged like a serious businessman's office — desk, curtained window, a drinks cabinet on one side, a bookcase on the other, sofas along the walls with a low table between them, oil paintings. The man behind the desk had the eyes of someone who spent a great deal of time assessing people, and his hands were folded in front of him on the desk.

The bartender returned the pendant to Evan and withdrew. The man at the desk stood.

"Good day. Is Sophia well?"

"Good day. She's well."

Evan had already identified him — a Vampire Baron, the same category as Robert at the castle. The bartender who had led them upstairs was Blood Clan as well, lower-ranked, no title. The other staff in the building were blood thralls. Tina couldn't tell any of this. Evan kept it to himself.

"Ferdinand. Will you have wine?" He moved to the cabinet with unhurried courtesy and produced three glasses. "And for this charming young lady — champagne?"

"Evan Wang. This is Tina." Evan accepted the glass. "Thank you."

Tina took hers with a small hesitation, then held it the way Evan held his and waited. Her composure, Evan thought, was remarkable for someone who had grown up in a one-room cottage with a dirt floor. Her mother — a baron's maid who had understood formal etiquette — had apparently passed it on.

They sat, or rather Evan and Ferdinand sat and Tina remained standing behind Evan's shoulder, as she understood her role to require.

Ferdinand raised his glass. Evan raised his. They drank. Tina took a careful sip and found it considerably more pleasant than she'd expected — she had never had alcohol before, but champagne at this level was mostly sweetness and effervescence.

"Good wine," Evan said, which was a courtesy rather than an observation — he could barely taste it. But something had changed recently; there was more sensation in the drinking than there used to be. He noticed it and set the question aside for later. "I'll come to the point. Tina and I were targeted last night. The mark on the man suggested the Silver Hand. You're not the Silver Hand, but I was hoping you could point me toward the people in this city who might know more."

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Ferdinand took this in without surprise. "We have no formal relationship with the Silver Hand. But as you're guests of our clan, I can introduce you to the relevant parties here — the local organization, and the Harpist Guild. Between them they should be able to tell you what you need to know." He paused. "And the girl?"

"Could she stay here while I go? She has some basic training, not much. I'd rather not bring her into this."

"I want to go with you," Tina said.

"It's not appropriate. I'm meeting people."

"Wang — she'll be safe here. No one would be foolish enough to act in this building."

That settled it. Ferdinand sent a guide with Evan, and they went down into the basement, and then further — Evan hadn't known the city's sewer system had been repurposed for this use, but several li of underground passage, three checkpoints staffed by people with flat eyes and the kind of stillness that comes from having done violence professionally, and an iron door at the end brought them somewhere that had clearly been furnished with that in mind.

The woman who met him inside was dressed in a way that was obviously calculated to make people look at her body rather than her face, and her body was covered in hidden things — Evan could see the outlines of them, the small bulges and angles that weren't decoration. Blades, he thought. Probably poisoned. And at least one magical implement that he couldn't identify from where he stood. She was not particularly strong in terms of outright magical or physical power — he could have handled her in a direct confrontation — but whoever tried to handle her directly was going to collect several interesting wounds in the process.

"Teresa. Blood Rose Teresa. Evan Wang." Ferdinand's man made the introduction.

"A pleasure." Evan's eyes went where they went, briefly, because he was paying attention to her as a threat assessment.

She had apparently been expecting a different reaction. She didn't retreat — she moved forward slightly, which was a test. Evan glanced at her face and kept his attention there. She was mildly surprised.

"Sit," she said, more straightforwardly than before.

He explained what he needed. She considered it, smiled, and named a price: thirty silver coins. He agreed without haggling. She added twenty for urgency. He produced the coins. She sent someone with a short instruction and told him to wait.

He waited two hours without apparent discomfort, which seemed to mildly unsettle the blood thrall who had accompanied him and was not constitutionally suited to sitting still. Evan kept a Wraith Eye circulating unseen through the surrounding area, not because he expected trouble but because the principle was sound.

Teresa came back in different clothes — practical rather than decorative — and handed him a piece of paper.

Baron Iden. As expected.

He let the paper catch fire in his hand without an incantation. Teresa's eyes noted this.

Outside the iron door, the blood thrall asked if he wanted to visit the Harpist Guild as well.

"Why wouldn't I?"

They came up out of the sewers and crossed several streets to a building beside a church. Evan gave the church a wider berth than strictly necessary — a habit that had formed itself since Nicholas Andrew's history became his own. Inside the building adjacent to it, under the sign of what appeared to be a legitimate trading company, was the Harpist Guild's Kansas City office.

The man who received him was plump and had an entirely harmless appearance, which Evan recognized as professional rather than accidental.

Evan had one thing to accomplish here. He wanted to hire someone to kill Baron Iden.

The logic was simple. The Silver Hand contracted for three attempts on a given target. If two had failed, a third was coming. If three failed, the contract was reviewed and repriced — because the client's intelligence had proven inaccurate and the difficulty was higher than represented. At that point the client either paid more or walked away.

If the client was dead, none of the above applied.

Evan could buy an assassin. Iden had proven he could do the same. The difference was that Evan intended to finish this cleanly, and finishing it cleanly meant removing the person who had opened the commission in the first place.

The Silver Hand was a larger problem than he could solve — it had branches throughout the region, it had done nothing wrong by its own professional standards, and he had no particular quarrel with it as an institution. Killing Iden would end the specific contract. Whatever the Silver Hand did after that was someone else's problem.

This was the entirety of his plan.